Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T15:19:59.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Success and Failure Factors: American Merchants in Foreign Trade in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Stuart Bruchey
Stuart Bruchey
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Business History at Northwestern University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

No definitive comparison of factors contributing to success and failure in business is possible. Yet a look at some of those factors, operative in a number of similar circumstances, helps sharpen the customary vague generalizations. An examination of the elements of prudence, diligence, housekeeping habits, intelligence, foresight, use of agents, degree of control, and teamwork suggests that in commerce of the period luck was probably of less influence than commonly supposed. A by-product of this broad inquiry is a specific and highly illuminating comparative picture of mercantile business practice.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1958 , pp. 272 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1958

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pares, Richard, Yankees and Creoles (Cambridge, 1956), p. 139.Google Scholar Pares finds this “strange.” But except for the necessity of dividing profits with Joint investors no such calculations were required: merchants based their investment decisions not upon records of past gain or loss but upon fresh market information; Bruchey, S., Robert Oliver, Merchant of Baltimore, 1783–1819 (Baltimore, 1956), pp. 135–141.Google Scholar

2 In 1805. For this and other information about the duPonts I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Norman B. Wilkinson, Research Associate of the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation in Wilmington, Delaware.

3 Porter, Kenneth W., The Jacksons and the Lees (Cambridge, 1937), Vol. 1, p. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Oliver Record Book (hereafter ORB) 5, pp. 42–14, to P. Godeffroy Sons & Co., et al., March 22, 1803 (Maryland Historical Society — hereafter Md. Hist. Soc).

5 Hedges, James B., The Browns of Providence Plantations (Cambridge, 1952), p. 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Harrington, Virginia D., The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1935), p. 133.Google Scholar

7 Tooker, Elva, Nathan Trotter, Philadelphia Merchant, 1787–1853 (Cambridge, 1955), p. 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Nolte, Vincent, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres or, Reminiscences of the Life of a Former Merchant (New York, 1854), p. 97.Google Scholar

9 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 364–365.

10 Hedges, op. cit., p. 11.

11 ORB 5, pp. 42–44, to P. Godeffroy Sons & Co., et al., March 22, 1803 (Md. Hist. Soc).

12 Porter, Kenneth W., John Jacob Astor, Business Man (Cambridge, 1931), Vol. II, p. 640.Google Scholar

13 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 363–364.

14 Gras, N. S. B. and Larson, Henrietta M., Casebook in American Business History (New York, 1939), p. 78.Google Scholar

15 Nolte, op. cit., p. 143.

16 Porter, Astor, Vol. II, Chap. 23.

17 Gras and Larson, op. cit., pp. 78, 6.

18 Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Maritime History of Massachusetts (Boston, 1921), pp. 130–131.Google Scholar

19 Fairchild, Byron, Messrs. William Pepperrell: Merchants at Piscataqua (Ithaca, 1954), pp. 47, 49.Google Scholar

20 See list of sailings in front of ORB 6 (Md. Hist. Soc).

21 Baxter, W. T., The House of Hancock, Business in Boston, 1724–1775 (Cambridge, 1945), pp. 146, 281–282Google Scholar; White, Philip L., The Beekmans of New York in Politics and Commerce, 1847–1877 (New York, 1956), p. 218.Google Scholar

22 Phillips, James D., Salem and the Indies (Boston, 1947), p. 78.Google Scholar

23 Cited by Albion, Robert G., The Rise of New York Port (New York, 1939), p. 264.Google Scholar The word “throne-room” is Miss Larson's (op. cit., p. 6).

24 Harrington, op. cit., p. 116.

25 Baxter, W. T., “Accounting in Colonial America,” in Littleton, A. C. and Yamey, B. S., Studies in the History of Accounting (Homewood, Ill., 1956), p. 280.Google Scholar Baxter believes that “‘colonial accounting’” lasted well into the 19th century. “By say 1820, the modem look is beginning to creep in: cash appears more often, debtors can sometimes be distinguished from creditors, and the double-entry structure is less incomplete.” (Pp. 286–287.)

26 Baxter cites not only the records of a “general store,” but also those of an innkeeper and blacksmith (pp. 275, 278, 280). It is true that a merchant was also a storekeeper, but I disagree with Baxter's conception of the storekeeping function as the focal point of the merchant's business activity, an activity in which ventures in foreign trade are regarded as “sidelines to his principal business” (p. 280). Baxter first elaborated this conception in his interpretation of Thomas Hancock as driven to engage in a variety of trading enterprises by the necessity for obtaining sterling exchange with which to pay for the goods he imported from London for sale in his store. In my opinion, it is infelicitous to envisage Hancock's “little bookshop” as the “nerve-center of a complex and far-flung business,” which included shipowning, mining and paper mill projects. (Baxter, House of Hancock, pp. 45–48, 62.) I believe Hancock to have been a typical 18th-century merchant in the sense that he sought profits from investments in diverse enterprises.

27 Martin, Margaret E., Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley, 1750–1820 (Smith College Studies in History, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, 1938–1939), p. 144.Google Scholar Daybooks, how ever, are books of first, rough entry and can be expected to have been kept with less formality than journals.

28 Littleton, A. C. and Yamey, B. S., Studies in the History of Accounting (Homewood, Ill., 1956), p. 11Google Scholar (Introduction by B. S. Yamey).

29 Martin, op. cit., p. 144. (My italics.)

30 Bridenbaugh, Carl, Cities in the Wilderness (New York, 1938), p. 359.Google Scholar

31 Hedges, op. cit., pp. 5–6.

32 Ibid., p. 16.

33 Editor's preface (N. S. B. Gras), in Baxter, House of Hancock p. xxii.

34 White, op. cit., p. 656. But James was certainly not a meticulous bookkeeper all his business life (cf. p. 352 with pp. 469, 490, and 492).

35 Bruchey, op. cit., p. 364.

36 Harrington, op. cit., p. 96.

37 In Md. Hist. Soc., Baltimore. The Oliver entry is in ORB 10, p. 225.

38 Martin, op. cit., p. 124; Hedges, op. cit., p. 330; to Francis Johonnot, Feb. 15, 1784 (Letter Book, Johnson, Johonnot & Co., 1783–1785, Md. Hist. Soc).

39 White, op. cit., p. 243.

40 Bruchey, op. cit., p. 317.

41 For Sombart and Weber, see Harrington, op. cit., p. 68; Wilson, Charles, Anglo-Dutch Commerce & Finance in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1941), p. 11Google Scholar; Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 197ff., 300ff.; Tooker, op. cit., p. 75.

42 Porter, Jacksons and Lees, Vol. I, p. 48; Hedges, op. cit., p. 27; Harrington, op. cit., p. 91; Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 56; Crittenden, Christopher C., The Commerce of North Carolina, 1763–1789 (New Haven, 1936), p. 109Google Scholar; Hedges, op. cit., p. 9; Pares, op. cit., p. 77.

43 Ltr. to Capt. Thomas O'Bryan, July 30, 1794. Smith Letter Book, III (1794–1818), Md. Hist. Soc.

44 Martin, op. cit., p. 133; Pares, op. cit., pp. 84, 78. It is my conclusion, rather than Pares', that advances were therefore not as important as they would otherwise have been.

45 Fairchild (Pepperrells), op. cit., p. 156; Pares, op. cit., p. 77; White, op. cit., pp. 307, 339.

46 For West Indian trade expansion in the case of New York, see Harrington, op. cit., App. D and G; for Philadelphia, see Albion, Robert G., “Colonial Commerce and Commercial Regulation,” in Williamson, Harold F., ed., The Growth of the American Economy (New York, 1951), p. 53Google Scholar; for Baltimore, see Gould, Clarence P., “The Economic Causes of the Rise of Baltimore,” in Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews by his Students (New Haven, 1931)Google Scholar; for the Connecticut Valley region (general trade expansion), see Martin, op. cit., pp. 19–20, 52–53; for Newport, see Bridenbaugh, op. cit., pp. 331, 362; for Charles Town, see Bridenbaugh, op. cit., p. 332; for the British West Indies, see Pitman, F. W., The Development of the British West Indies, 1700–1763 (New Haven, 1917), pp. 190, 202–203.Google Scholar

47 Harrington, op. cit., p. 193; Bruchey, op. cit., p. 148.

48 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 80, 190, 194–195.

49 Ltr. to Messrs. P. Burling & Co., Nov. 6, 1788 (Smith Ltr. Bk., II, in Md. Hist. Soc.).

50 ORB 4, pp. 29–31, to J. & F. Baring & Co., July 22, 1800. (My italics.) (Md. Hist. Soc.)

51 Harrington, op. cit., p. 87.

52 Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 302; Hedges, op. cit., p. 28; Fairchild, op. cit., p. 51.

53 Cutler, Carl C., Five Hundred Sailing Records of American Built Ships (Mystic, Conn., 1952), p. 22Google Scholar; Heaton, Herbert, “The American Trade,” in Trade Winds, Parkinson, C. N., ed. (London, 1948), p. 200.Google Scholar

54 Fairchild, op. cit., p. 52.

55 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 144, 300. (My italics.)

56 Hedges, op. cit., pp. 72–73 (Baxter); White, op. cit., p. 541 (Beekman).

57 Ltr. to John Gay, July 30, 1794. (Smith Ltr. Bk., III, Md. Hist. Soc.) Col. Wro. Pepperrell tried in 1727 to obtain the services of an agent in Carolina to avoid the delays of ship captains (Fairchild, op. cit., pp. 94–95).

58 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 149–151.

59 Fairchild, op. cit., pp. 164, 54–55 (Pepperrells); Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 201 (Hancock); White, op. cit., p. 350 (Beekman).

60 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 149–151, 159, 142, 156–157.

61 White, op. cit., p. 298.

62 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 150–151.

63 ORB 18, p. 46, entry of Feb. 15, 1806; ORB 6, p. 411, to J. G. Villaneuva, Sept. 13, 1808 (Md. Hist. Soc).

64 White, op. cit., p. 290 (Gerard Beekman), p. 387 (James Beekman); Tooker, op. cit., p. 75 (Trotters); Bruchey, op. cit., p. 143.

65 White, op. cit., p. 387 (James Beekman); Fairchild, op. cit., pp. 66–67.

66 Fairchild, op. cit., p. 163 (Pepperrells); Hedges, op. cit., p. 27 (Browns); White, op. cit., pp. 253, 387 (Beekmans); Porter, Astor, Vol. I, pp. 533, 536; Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 142–143 (Olivers).

67 Fairchild, op. cit., pp. 156, 163.

68 Bruchey, op. cit., pp. 146–147.

69 ORB 3, pp. 81–82, to Hall & McIntosh, Aug. 16, 1797 (Oliver); White, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 272, to John Bennit, Jan. 28, 1756; Porter, Autor, Vol. I, p. 431; Hedges, op. cit., pp. 78–80.

70 Smith Ltr. Bk., III, 1794–1818 (Md. Hist. Soc).

71 Pares, op. cit., p. 85.

72 Hedges, op. cit., p. 29.

73 White, op. cit., pp. 534 (Gerard Beekman), 347 (James Beekman); Porter, Jacksons and Lees, Vol. I, p. 88; Lamb, Robert K., “The Entrepreneur and the Community,” in Men in Business, Miller, W., ed. (Cambridge, 1952), p. 93Google Scholar; Bruchey, op. cit., Chap. 6 (Oliver).